One of the realities of life in higher education (my current industry) is that we often have less resources than our corporate counterparts in human resources, the result of this is that sometimes we lag behind in terms of innovation - and in some ways rightfully so, our primary customers are our students and that is where the resources we have go first. There are times though - like yesterday - when one of my team attended an event hosted by our online employee learning provider and we got a peek at what other organizations are doing with the same tool we use. It gives us perspective, it helps us to realize that we've only touched the tip of the iceberg (even though we may have gone in with the mindset we were deep sea diving at 10,000 meters), it gets us buzzing. We walk away better able to understand what we have, what we want, and what we can reasonably achieve given all the factors impacting our ability to develop or implement or even consider a new value-adding project.

I think it's this industry related cultural dynamic in part that got me so excited when social media started to become less of an individual endeavor with people connecting via pixels and data streams and online games to where it slowly began shifting to where companies were using it as another part of their branding and sourcing methodologies - here was something where the tools were readily available, the cost was relatively low, and the potential for impact was high.

We immediately got to work and built organizational profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn - my social media ninjas (the same crew who put together the video featured in this post) took on the challenge with gusto. I'll be honest, there have been some hiccups centered around the regularity and/or nature of content as we work to really focus on each of the different audiences we're targeting with each site; there have been successes in terms of aesthetic, feedback, and maybe most importantly applicant flow courtesy of Facebook and Twitter while we try to wrap our heads better around the notion of a careers page on LinkedIn as opposed to the careers tab of our organizational profile (different things, one being no cost, the other not so much - we're looking into it all) and how to maximize our presence.

And then there is Google+ - we created a page and then let it die a slow death, my ninjas didn't see the point and frankly I struggled with it too. It was new and different while feeling much like some of the other resources we were using. It was by invite only and we just couldn't get a grip on how to use it.

Then I saw the below:


The PepsiCo Jobs page on Google+ is effective, it's clean, it does the job and then comes back for more. It's the right mix of content (videos, information, polls, events, etc.) and brand that we couldn't figure out how to put together - it gave us a moment of pause and what seemed so fuzzy before was completely clear - and the ninjas are now putting together all the pieces, cobbling it together with one part graphic design, one part dynamic content, and one part awesome as we re-animate our page - rise up zombie Google+ profile, rise up!

Is it just me or does seeing other people and/or organizations do amazing things get you fired up to do something outstanding in your own company? With that in mind, if you know of any other great examples like the above? I'd love to give them a look, maybe a shout out and all that - shoot me a note and let me know.